Name Links Development to Regions Early History

Bird's Fort was the area's first Anglo settlement. From its pioneers emerged other settlements such as Dallas and Fort Worth.

By Sally Claunch
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

ARLINGTON - A wooden fort resting on the quiet shores of Lake Calloway in 1841 protected settlers from American Indians who lived along the banks of Village Creek in what is now north Arlington.

Historians call the site the "birthplace of the Metroplex," but even a historical marker left to commemorate the site has been removed for road construction.

Bird's Fort is no more, having been leveled by constant flooding and gravel mining around the small lake.

However, its name will live on at the Lakes of Bird's Fort, a new development planned around the area.

The residential and commercial development would span about 1,400 acres north of the Trinity River and west of Farm Road 157. The development could add about $800 million to the city's property tax base, supporters say.

Developer Sam Ware said he hopes to include names of popular figures from the 160-year-old fort for street names in the neighborhood.

But some historians say that merely naming streets is not enough.

"The founding of Dallas, Fort Worth and Arlington all sprang up from events at Bird's Fort," said Ron Wright, an Arlington city councilman and former chairman of the Tarrant County Historical Commission. "I hope some day that the hill and lake will be a park with a replica of the fort.

"This is for all the people who say Arlington has no history."

After fighting Indians at the Battle of Village Creek, Maj. Jonathan Bird built the fort on the military road that connected the Red River to Austin about a mile north of the Trinity River and a mile east of what is now Farm Road 157.

The first Anglo attempt at a settlement in what became Tarrant County, the fort consisted of a log stockade, a block house and a few cabins on the edge of the lake.

According to historical records, Bird persuaded some of his relatives and friends from the Red River area and a company of Texas Rangers to come live at the fort and settle the area with promises of free land.

The winter of 1841 was harsh, and the Indians weren't happy about settlers occupying their land. Some of the settlers were killed or died of exposure.

Meanwhile, the Republic of Texas extended the nearby Peters Colony, gobbling up the settlers' claim to the land around Bird's Fort. Faced with possible starvation, John Neely Bryan enticed some of the settlers to head east with him and found what was to become Dallas. The other settlers went back to the Red River.

A treaty signed with the Indians in 1843 was one of the most significant aspects of the fort, Wright said. Republic of Texas President Sam Houston called a council with Indian tribes at Bird's Fort.

Several Indian tribes in the area attended, including the Delaware, Caddo, Cherokee, Ioni, Keechi, Anadarko, Tawakoni, Waco and Biloxi. Comanches were not present because they didn't sign treaties.

"It was the most sweeping treaty in the history of the Republic of Texas and opened up all of North Central Texas for settlement," Wright said. "It established a boundary between white settlements and Indian land."

Trading houses were placed along the boundary, one of which was at Marrow Bone Spring, where Col. Middleton Tate Johnson settled, establishing Johnson Station, now called Arlington.

In 1849, Johnson led Maj. Ripley Arnold to a site at the juncture of the Clear Fork and West Fork of the Trinity River, to establish Fort Worth.

Developer Sam Ware plans to name some of the streets in the nearby neighborhood after some of the players from the fort's history, such as "Roasting Ear," an Indian chief who negotiated the peace treaty at Bird's Fort.

"I like taking a relatively obscure thing, like the Lakes at Arlington, and renaming it the Lakes at Bird's Fort, taking on a theme of something significant," Ware said.

Geraldine Mills, executive director of the Arlington Historical Society, said she would also like to have a park dedicated to the fort's history. "I would like to see some signage besides street signs and state markers," she said. "The marker only says so much."